Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT is a type of therapy where the professional helps the patient to identify maladaptive thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that may be sustaining mental disorders. The patients and the professionals then work together to challenge and reframe these maladaptive cognitions with more objective and reasonable ones. CBT has consistently proven to be effective at treating mild to moderate mental disorders caused by maladaptive cognitions.

How it works.

Professionals who use CBT work with the hypothesis that there are maladaptive cognitive factors that form the base of your mental disorder. When you do CBT Clinic Therapy, the professional will use several types of CBT and different CBT strategies to help you change these negative cognitions. Here are five strategies used in CBT.

Identify the negative thoughts

This part requires introspection, something many people are not comfortable with. Your therapist will help you identify maladaptive behaviors and habits and help you question the thoughts, feelings, and situations that contribute to them. Introspection may be difficult, but it may lead to crucial insights and to self-discovery, which will help treatment work faster.

Practice the new skill you want to have

Many times, when you are in a situation that triggers negative emotions, it may be challenging to come up with new responses. However, if you can prepare yourself for these situations beforehand, you have a higher chance of success. For example, a person with social anxiety can practice what they will say when they are approached by someone new so that they do not panic when it happens.

Set goals.

You have to know where you want to go before you start the journey. Goal setting isn’t always easy, but a CBT professional can help you identify your goals, prioritize them, and even break them down so they are manageable. This way, you will be able to see the progress you are making compared to where you started and where you are going.

Problem-solving

Life will always have stressors. A CBT professional can help you identify the five steps involved in problem-solving so that when faced with stress, you can make conscious, wise decisions. When you can handle the big and small stressors that come your way, the less impact they will have on your physical and psychological health.

Monitoring yourself

Thought patterns were not established in a day, and they can, therefore, not be overcome in a day. You may have to reframe and replace harmful and disruptive thoughts and emotions over and over again until the new thought patterns become ingrained. One highly recommended technique for self-monitoring is keeping a diary or a journal.

During this process, it is essential to remind you that your progress will not be instant but gradual. You can use the gym analogy to put it into perspective. When you start, you may be weaker, but you will grow stronger with practice. The same can be said of CBT. However, in the same way, disuse can lead to decay in muscles; without consistency with CBT, you may lose all or most of the progress you have made.